and often that's been told as a sort of a story of decline that. there was a great know this golden era and something worse came later. and but really oral histories of of the descendants nations of those old urban civilizations talk about it as as as an improvement. and so i trace some those changes that came about. and one of those was the really reciprocity becomes a value a value in in but also in economics politics. and so the many, many histories and that sort of archeology this up and when i know and the way that polities native polities have ever since oral histories really talk about this this extreme rejection of hierarchy a very powerful religious political leaders that existed in some societies at the time, urbanization and the replacing

of that with with values, reciprocity and consensus and so it's sort of c one of the reasons that this comes about is is sort of in a time when when winters were colder and and growing seasons were shorter it was harder to depend on agriculture trading much more important that had been the path certainly been trade in the path but but but of food became more important in this new era and recipes paucity in economics meant that if they were to trading peoples it was the responsibility of each to sort of take care of the other. and so if one trading partners, you know crops had not done well in a certain it was the responsibility through reciprocity of the other group to to feed them that year and if you were the one feeding being generous us with somebody else then you were sort of building up credit. so reciprocity is also, you know, building up credit for, hard times. and so you really see reciprocity as this give and

take and that that value of giving really has at the center of native economies and and politics and sort social system something that that that native people today many them still still talk about as a value like all values it's exasperate all right we don't always live up to our values but but it is that native nations just return to again and again is talking about what they want to do. the reciprocity is supposed to be something that they that they strive for. i mean, going to your previous question, i think reciprocity, something that i hope that i've also practiced in in sort of some of my relationships with with tribal scholars or bringing them some, you know, documents from french and spanish spanish archives that i've collected and learning in return from them, although all the things they now. nice i love that you native nations long resisted colonial efforts to take their resources

for the colonists own gain and profit i think we're well aware of that sort of narrative and i what i love about your book is that you really talk about how the native nations really use their diplomatic skills to maintain relationships that benefited their community for a large, like you said the centuries before. yeah yeah. would you mind if i read a little bit? no, i do not. yeah, i think i might read a little bit from my mohawk chapter because it's perfectly illustrates what what you're asking and you find it. see if i can hold the microphone and read at the same time and distance. i can actually see. as this guy began to lighten the enemy came ashore and the mohawk warriors came out of the barricade. the mohawks, an impressive sight. nearly 200 of them painted for war with wooden armor and helmets to protect themselves from their enemies. arrows and wearing their distinct haudenosaunee short feathered headdresses which

inspired terror in their enemies. the approaching at algonquin and any let out a cry and then did something unusual when. they were about 30 steps away from the mohawks they parted into two groups, leaving in the middle. one man covered in metal from his hat to his knees as the mohawks pulled back their bows, preparing to shoot their first round of arrows, they heard an enormous cracking boom as if thunder and the sound of a waterfall had combined and struck for just a moment right in front of them. one of the mohawk standing near the front down, dead shot right through. his wooden armor, the enemy force shouted in delight. another bang. another man fell the mohawk had never yet seen. and it was astonishing to see people without being hit by an arrow. if we rushed too fast through the 17th century, we might interpret. the arrival of guns and metal tipped arrows as the start of native dependance and european dominance. but we would be wrong. local rivalry, customs and geography continue to the most

important factors in native decisions and determine the opportunities and limits for europeans. there been new weapons here before and new ways of defending against them. when your gained some advantage, you adapted. and that is what the mohawks did. and then i won't read this part, but they go on and they they develop the mohawks, develop this fur trade with the dutch. the dutch are completely dependent on them and. one of the things that the dutch make are right, right, right, right. they make cakes at dutch, right? they make cakes out of white. they make white bread. they make these things that it turns out the mohawks really like because everybody likes cake. right? and so the mohawks have so much economic power through the fur trade, military power to that they start buying everything that's made out of white flour from from albany, but comes albany later and the reason i know about this, that there are these letters from dutch

colonies writing to the netherlands company, complaining that they can only afford very heavy bread. right, because the mohawks buy all the white flour and buy all the cakes. so it's one example of of how if you slow things down a little bit, not to not to deny you know all the horrors of colonialism, but if you slow things down, remember, there are there are eras in which native nations have more power than europeans that there other stories too. that is of my favorites. so really glad you talk about that because if we have time i want to go back to that. one of the things i loved you know, i a teacher for many years so learning is very important to. and so one thing i loved is that you really address some inaccuracies in what we may have learned or what was presented in textbooks or the narratives that we were given and that we've been taught.

so i just wanted to see if you would discuss a little bit about the choice to adopt horses into the cultures, how that changed the lives of the plains nations, right? so one of the people that i look at that i examined closely are the kiowa is in the 19th century, but previously, so there are no horses on the plains before come. there's a very small horse that's extinct by then. but not not the horse. not the horse that you ride. right. so yeah, there's this. yeah. if there's any stereotype of native americans, it is that they ride horses, right? and yet that's something happens after the coming of europeans spanish the spanish who bring horses to north america. but you know that's it's you know colonists enforce their will on indians actually plains indians that the spanish didn't really want them to get horses they at first tried to have a monopoly on horses and keep

native americans from having horses. and very quickly, native americans started taking horses, stealing horses, then breeding them themselves and creating an economy and a culture, the sort of the plains indian culture that it's a a creation of. yeah. as say as of choice of people who decided to live a different way, you know, another stereotype of native americans is that they're nomadic. these are people who were not nomadic. they lived on river, you know, in river. and they farmed and they went on hunts, you know, only part of the year, maybe one big bison hunt a year on foot. but with the coming of the horse some of them chose to actually become and live in teepee, no teepees or tents, right. they're not they're not their housing. you can move around and are an invention of this new culture that that is horse bound and then there are other native peoples in the same region who don't make that choice. right. who stay in their river towns. and in fact, many of them become more because they now are

growing more and more food feed. you know, agricultural project products to sell to these bison hunters who live all year on the plains. thank you for that throughout book you emphasize how native never surrender their. i think you talked a little bit that earlier or their languages or religious beliefs practices can you talk about the ways they ensured their nation survival really just to underscore the of the present as well right right yeah yeah i'm glad you asked that i mean it's almost miraculous. so it really shows the determination of of ancestors of today's nations just that to who? not, you know, not only not to stop being native american, but also not to stop being their particular or that chickasaw or choctaws, you know, navajos or they were.

now, not to say that no native nations sort of combined or, you know, had to give up things. they certainly did. and many of them did lose their languages and such. but the sort of determination, um, to remain their own people, their own peoples is really striking with. all the, the pressures to change that and particularly the united states in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, when the united states outlawed a practicing culture, you know, publicly outlawed native religions, outlawed native languages, took children their homes from their cultures, and put them on trains too far away to try to make them not to be part of their community anymore. the fact that, you know, some of those children went back home and learned those lessons from their grandparents and their parents insisted on continue, you know, that their grandparent and parents insisted on that their kids would continue you to

be kiowa or whatever they you know they were is just is just amazing and i think one of the things i try to talk about in every chapter is the importance of women in in just that. why utah maintaining maintaining even through adaptation, through change because all cultures change. right. but but just maybe quietly speaking the language at home, telling kids over and over who they are, you know who you are, we know who you are. even if if it's school or whatever, you you don't talk about it. i think that's just that's maybe the biggest key to how they how survived as nations and throughout the book european and colonial colonial colonialists views of land are central to the relationships between them and native nations. what were those views and how did they transition over the centuries to the increased detriment of native americans?

yeah, so, um, you colonization has at its root the idea that you could take other people's stuff. it's sort of the opposite of reciprocity and it gave european an idea that they, they had a right to what they wanted and they in no way were always able to do that. there are plenty of times when when native nations had the power to keep them from doing, um, but there's an under current of sort of belief from the beginning that native nations don't quite own the land. maybe it doesn't completely belong to them, maybe god doesn't. for them to still stick around. um, there's, there's very sort of religious tone to early on in, in colonization of, of the americas and then it, it continues in various forms over the over the centuries through indian removal sort of, you

know, say maybe a native nation does have a right to some, but the u.s. government can say where that land can be. and it isn't their homeland anymore. if if there are u.s. citizens who want that and through through allotment in the in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when reservations were carved up once again in, an attempt to make their not be an attempt by the u.s. government to, make their not be communal lands anymore, to make their not tribal lands to have, uh, native people only be individual landowners as part of a, um, attempt to take land and to break up tribes. um, yeah, i think and in the book it's very stark, when you see the maps right that you include and how sort of gets to the ends, of, of the reservation lands and sort of the very narrow small areas.

yeah. in the afterword you write white settlers who took land wrote a new that hid native nationhood and power and made their own rise seem inevitable and justified. how would you rewrite that history? um, yeah. so i think. this is in some ways my, to answer that question, right, that native nations were a long time ago. they're, they survive colonialism here today and they'll be here in the i think is the counter to that. and you know, i think one of the things that many native americans keep saying today is we're still here. and that is just the direct response to that sort of settler colonial attempt, not not only to take land and to to break up tribes, all of those things we've been talking about. but then to paper it all over as if it hadn't is if, you know, native americans, they were sort of here, but they never really

owned on the land. and, uh, yeah i think i would just say exactly opposite. they, they've been here the whole and many have legal rights land and we were talking in the back about sovereignty especially with the cherokee nation. if you want to speak a little bit about both the use of the law to keep lands also to reclaim them today and i know there's some work to do that right right right. so so one of the things i think a lot of people don't know today is, is is how tribal sovereignty today that that was federally recognized tribes have have under the under the federal government have um have certain elements of sovereignty that some of that is rooted that cherokee court case was true versus which was the first case to use the term domestic dependent nations. i at the time the cherokees and those native nations think they were domestic to the united states all they were their own

nations. but it's a very powerful tool forward of, uh, of asserting sovereignty within the united that, uh, tribal nations recognized. tribal nations, at least are not under the states. they are sort of alongside the states, under the federal government. they have treaty rights certainly, um, that, that uh, they can enforce through, um, in the courts and they know people have been paying attention to. they've won a couple of really important u.s. cases before the u. for the u.s. supreme court recently, including, um, uh, the mcgirt case, which, uh, which is about, about sort of exercising sovereignty over criminal cases among many of the tribes in oklahoma. um, and so a lot of this is still just being worked out exactly what sovereignty will look like going forward. but just a, just a couple of examples, if, um, if you looked at the, the infrastructure bill or, the covid relief acts, you can see those that aid was going to or federal dollars were fund

or were flowing to states, counties and tribal governments. that and tribal governments is at the end those lists and it's a really important reminder that um these are functioning governments that have a huge amount of, of, of presence in the lives of their tribal if you want easy way to do is just go to a tribe's website and many tribes have a website that you know, has a lot about history and a lot about culture, but is mostly about social services and the kinds of things that governments do. and it's a really good reminder that they you know they're governing entities, um, and that they're, they will be for that, for, you know, well, the future. and i haven't lived in north carolina very as the couple of years. so you could speak to the native nations that are here and within north carolina. um, to those who also may not know much about them. right. i'm really glad you ask that. i've sort of had to say, except for state recognized a couple of times, i get myself rescued from

that. so the eastern band of cherokee is the only federally recognized tribe that's based in north carolina. the others are state recognized tribes. and so one of the chapters, one of the actually the first chapter i have in here that has europeans it that europeans are in the whole chapter is the founding the brief founding of roanoke on the north carolina coasts. and so ancestors of many of north carolina's native nations today are in that chapter, um, sort of in this very, um, brief interaction with the english who tried to found a, uh, a colony at roanoke and failed, obviously. and so then i do talk in the book about north carolina state recognized tribes over the, um over their centuries of history since then. and, um the very this the striking difference between what it meant to be native nation that faced the english very early right on the atlantic coast whether in north carolina

virginia, new england versus peoples like the cherokees the kiowa is the chinese who had a little more time and who could do had a longer with the sort of thing i was reading about the the mohawks know people on the coast of north carolina virginia new england they are hit very hard and very fast with large large, large numbers of english settlers and the fact that they survive even as native communities is even more amazing that they still today, that they through the centuries just kept telling their children and their this is who we are. no matter what happens in the outside world with without, you know, and jim crow and all of these efforts to, you know, turn them into either white people or black people or or maybe just generic native people. um, they kept their, you know there's some of them definitely combined, but they, they, they kept their native communities and they kept many separate

native communities through to today. and they too, i think are having a renaissance. and um, in various ways though still struggling about sort of recognition. when you all purchased the book and walk away with it, what would you like your readers to maybe take away or with or yeah, yeah. i think it's just my main messages would be this a long history native nations. i think i said this already. basically native nations were here long, long time ago. they're here today. they're going to be here in the future. and they're an important part of u.s. history. but on the flipside, u.s. history is just you know, it's only 250 years old. it's there's a, um it's it's a bit of a blip in native history. and, you know, we'll what the future holds. but, um, you know, i, it's, it, it may end up that's a that's a smaller, smaller segment of the

history of this continent in the long, long run than the united states, even. thank you. i wanted to give folks an opportunity to ask any questions they might have. and i'm sorry i, um there are there will be if you raise your hand, someone will bring you microphone. and if you would just kind of speaking to about as close as i am, i should state that. thank you so as a historian and i'm curious to know and talked about there being sort of ah the nation especially native americans being in the midst of a renaissance currently historically. we've also named various moments in native american history right remove all that you know as eras removal and things like that. what do you think we'll name this moment and what will historians call this moment in the future? if you had to project.

yeah, yeah. that that's that's a great, great question. and i think, you know, historians calling it the self-determined era and sort of the revival of sovereignty, um, i wonder if we're now moving even into sort of the next phase and it may be too early to, uh, to name it, but i think maybe, maybe self-determination is sort of 70 years or very late 20th century, beginning of the 21st century. maybe now we're in something, you know, people use the word renaissance a lot i think that probably doesn't work because it was a different historical era. but but i think maybe there there's going to be some some word that gets at the sort more than self-determination, using that self-determination, that increase of sovereignty to, you know, so, so say, you know, places that have casinos or have other sort of, um, sort of ways of starting bring income in that they didn't have before. many are pumping that money back into, you know, into new tribal businesses, into small business loans for tribal and all that and this sort of virtuous circle of investment that and then also

putting money into cultural revival language. so i think it will be a word or a couple words that gets at that kind of moving even what you can do with, sovereignty, even, you know that that affects people's lives even more. thank you. because it feels like it just sort of stops with the seventies and eighties and that might be how history sort of happens. like we're just haven't quite gotten around to renamed to naming a new thing. but it does feel like i teach native american literature when i teach i. and when you teach native american literature, you're teaching native american history because we don't get it so you don't get it. and so it is funny because everything still seems to stop in the seventies and eighties so and so then that still feels like ancient to young university students. yeah, i would. yeah. yeah, exactly. and yet you go into bookmarks and and there's there's clearly a renaissance going on in native literature today. so maybe. yeah, maybe. yeah. that makes me now want to use

the word renaissance. just go ahead and use that and students now, they've been using it in native american for long. oh, okay. good, okay, good, good. yeah. so maybe you need a but. yeah, thanks. but it's okay so high. it takes me a long time. check things out and i've only just watching yellowstone. but i've been interested in the native. american storyline and i if in current culture what feel is an accurate of the current native themes or reality yeah, yeah. so, so i do have a few favorites. i like reservation dogs, which is based on, on the creek reservation in the. in oklahoma. and uh, um, uh oh.

what's the ed helms rutherford falls. rutherford. and it's about history. it's, it's this town where. two best friends, one who's whose ancestor founded the town, right? he's sort of this new england guy. and and then and his best friend who runs the tribal cultural center and museum. and and she's she belongs to the it's sort of made up, but it's like, you know, the local tribe. and it also has lots of native actors and writers and, um, and it's funny reservation dogs is funny too, but it's a little, uh, rougher. um, and what? oh, and uh, um, uh, um. resident alien. is maybe going a little bit further, right? but it's, it's about. so this, this guy who's actually an alien, but then he makes friends with, lots of indians and he know an alien.

yeah. and also funny, funny and very smart so. and also, you know, again, you know, just it's this renaissance period like there are so many native writers and native actors, native showrunners who are involved in these, um, in these shows, it's it's really, i think it's an exciting time and then if you really like mohawk girl, it's just a girl. so. so, so you had mentioned, um, sort of that reciprocity you were sharing with the tribes and then also coming back with literature and other sources from different european nations. when you shared that information with them, did you like little vignettes where they kind made connections or maybe found something contradictory, something shared based on that new interaction?

yeah, that's a great question. so so most of that for me has been with the co-op has because i my first book had to do with co-op on osage history. and so that i got to know, um, the tribal historic preservation officer and some of the people there. and so the, these documents that i was using are from the 18th century, the french and, spanish. and so it's one of the things that they're wanting to do is, is just really have this long history of their own, that they that they're writing and telling to their own people. and so just having those as part of, uh, of their archive is really important and then the co-op boards can go look at them themselves. and i think some the most interesting conversations have been about language because um, the french missionaries who would come in and they wanted to learn and in this case they wanted to learn cobol language in order to, for it to be part of their mission izing effort. and so they would write down vocabulary words as were trying to learn for themselves. and those are really documents to a tribe today.

it gives them a into the language of their ancestors, which has changed over time. some of been lost, but also some of it is just changed because languages change over the centuries. and so to sit down those and sort of say those words out loud, because, you know, the french guy is writing down with a lot of extra letters because the french has a lot of extra letters. and so you sort of say it out loud if, you read french and then a couple who who knows language hears it and it oh that's this word, even though it doesn't look like it right when a frenchman wrote it down. so those have been some of the most exciting conversations. so i hope those kinds of things will continue. but, um. but yeah, i think. how were you able to incorporate mythologies or religious or spiritual, um, you know, themes, stories into the work that you

did? i mean, i, i do some of that and i try to be careful with there's lots i don't know, there's tons. i don't understand. and so religion, something i probably try to be even more careful with than other things. but, um, and to try to keep it on a pretty general level, one of the things that, um, i think is really important for understanding this long history is these inclusive ascetic nature of most native religions that, you know, at least in theory, islam, judaism, those are all exclusivist. you, you are or you aren't, right? and you become christian. you're supposed to stop being the non-christian you were and become. now, you know, it's a little more complicated that in actual life, but native religion to generalize were esthetic are inclusive ascetic in that if you and your people you know it's not willy but you see you learn about a belief a religious belief or a religious that seems true that seems valuable. you can pull in and make it part

of your religion having to get rid of anything else. if you think it doesn't make sense, then you don't have to. right. but, um, and i think that's, that's a really way of understanding ending interactions or religious between europeans and native people. there were plenty of times when christian missionaries thought they had made converts and they thought that meant they'd got of their old religion and then found actually, no, that they're had used their own methods of of inclusive, ascetic religion and had, uh, had added christianity to that of parts of christianity to what they already believed practiced. um, and i think that's one of the ways in which native religions been able to survive in various forms and adapt because they're supposed to adapt or they're supposed to change as they add new things. but without, uh, you know, complete giving them up. how did you get